- Text: Colossians 3:18–4:1, NKJV
- Series: Colossians (2021), No. 11
- Date: Sunday evening, April 18, 2021
- Venue: Central Baptist Church — Lawton, Oklahoma
- Audio Download: https://archive.org/download/exploringhisword/2021-s04-n011-z-redeemed-relationships.mp3
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Transcript:
I wonder if you’re ever amazed, like I am, and not in a good way, at the way people will treat each other. Especially people that are close to each other, the way they’ll treat each other. Charla, not too long ago, we were talking about somebody she knows who will make fun of her husband in front of other people and thinks it’s funny to put him down and will tell him to shut up and that sort of thing.
And she said, I know that would never fly at our house. She said, I know that that would be discussed when we get home. Now, not that I’m a yeller or anything, but it would be one of these situations where I’d tell her, I don’t talk to you that way.
And I expect that you would not talk to me that way. You know, she just said, I know that wouldn’t fly. And we have neighbors, and I can’t remember if I’ve told the story here.
I’ve told it so many times. We had neighbors, not we have. We had neighbors once upon a time that three or four generations of the same family lived all together in the house next to us, and they would just scream at each other all the time.
Sometimes you could hear them inside the house. Sometimes they’d spill out into the driveway, and they’d scream at each other so loud it would set off my security cameras. And, you know, you hear them all kinds of words, calling each other, screaming at each other.
They would cuss at me sometimes if I caught their attention while we were out there. There was one day, Charla and I were in the front yard looking at something, and they happened to spill out of the front of their house screaming at each other. And we were kind of trapped because we’re out in the front yard.
They can see us, but for us to get back inside our house, we would have had to. . .
And by the way, I don’t know if I made this clear. It’s not where we live now. But to get back into our house, we would have had to go over on the side of the house close to where they were in their driveway.
And I thought, I don’t want to get anywhere near this where they’re going to drag me into this and start screaming at me. But we can’t just kind of stand in the yard and act like, try to not look like you’re listening. Try to pull that off.
So we’re over there looking at rose bushes. Oh my, look, they have leaves. trying to make conversations.
And meanwhile, this horrible thing is going, and it was routine. That happened all the time. And it rarely happens that I’ll go to Walmart and not hear somebody screaming at their children.
Now, I have children. I have to get on to my children too. I don’t think I’ve ever screamed and called them names in public or anywhere else, but especially not in public.
You know, we see things like this and we talk to our kids about it and we tell them not that we’re perfect. You know, we have our squabbles. We have our disagreements.
Sometimes voices are raised in our home. It happens. We’re human.
But we tell our kids, we try not to treat. . .
What you’re looking at over here, what you’re hearing, we try not to do that because we love Jesus. And because the way we love Jesus is going to show up in the way we treat others. We’ve been working through the book of Colossians and we’re nearly to the end of it.
And as we come to the end of chapter 3 and into the beginning of chapter 4 tonight, But Paul talks about the way our relationships show our love for Jesus. The way we relate to other people. How it reflects the love that we have for Jesus.
And so we’re going to start in Colossians chapter 3 tonight. If you’ll turn there with me. I’ve got on the notes, on my notes and on your screen, verse 18.
But we’re actually going to start at verse 17, which we read last week. If you would stand with me as we read together from God’s Word. And I think it’s important to go back to verse 17, even though we covered that last time.
because it really lays the groundwork for why we do all the stuff that he lists in verses 18 and following. So verse 17 says, And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him. Wives, submit to your own husbands as is fitting in the Lord.
Husbands, love your wives and do not be bitter toward them. Children, obey your parents in all things, for this is well-pleasing to the Lord. Fathers, do not provoke your children lest they become discouraged.
Bond servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh, not with eye service as men pleasers, but in sincerity of heart, fearing God. And whatever you do, do it heartily as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance. For you serve the Lord Christ, but he who does wrong will be repaid for what he has done.
There is no partiality. Masters, give your bond servants just and fair, knowing that you also have a master in heaven. And you may be seated.
Now, I will point out, in case any of you have noticed that my wife is not here tonight, it’s not because of the subject matter. She called me this afternoon. I was up here working, getting some things ready for the coming up week.
And she called me and she said, I’m really not feeling well. And being pregnant, I would probably never feel well. But she said, I’m really not feeling well.
And one of the kids is acting like they don’t feel well. Would it bother you if we’re not there tonight, if we just watch it at home on streaming, if we don’t feel well? I said, yeah, of course, that’s fine.
Why are you asking? She said, well, you’re preaching tonight on being submissive. I said, stop.
Stop. Let’s not play this game. So she’s out because she’s under the weather.
She did tell me, she said, I know you’re preaching She said, feel free to use any example you want to. Just know I’ll be watching. But as we read through this, we tend to focus on the part about submission.
And people in our society bristle at that suggestion. We tend to focus just on that part. And it’s important, it’s in there.
But we don’t pay attention always to everything that comes after it. And there’s instructions here. There are instructions here in this passage for more than just wives.
There are instructions in here that apply to all of us, and we need to pay attention to that. When we take all of these commandments together, it tells us that a Christian’s devotion to Christ should be evident in the way we relate to others. We can say we love Jesus Christ and live in a way that’s totally inconsistent with that.
But we’re called to live in a way and treat others in a way and relate to others in a way and carry ourselves with an attitude consistent with what we say we believe about Jesus Christ. And there’s something in here, I don’t care where you are in life, there’s something in here that applies to you in principle, even if not spelled out in black and white. So throughout Colossians chapter 3 that we’ve been looking at the last few Sunday nights, Paul has described the way we ought to live as followers of Jesus Christ. The beginning of Colossians is very theological, and then you move at some point and that says here’s the practical application of all this theology. And he begins to talk about how we as Christians ought to live as transformed people by the work of Jesus Christ, the way we ought to live as followers of Christ. And here he applies this to our relationships.
Because that’s a huge part of the way we live is the way we interact with people around us. Most of us do not live in a cabin in the mountains by ourselves and come down once a month for supplies, right? There are people around us that we have to deal with.
And the hard part of this is that none of his admonitions go along with what is natural or instinctual for us. None of these things that we’ve just read go along with what just comes naturally for us. This is not the way we operate.
Just if we’re going off of the flesh, if we’re going off of instinct, it’s not how we operate. Verse 18, he calls for wives to submit to their own husbands. The idea of submitting to anyone tends to be difficult for us.
Part of it’s our human nature. Part of it, I think, is our American DNA. I mean, I get it.
I’ve got the rattlesnake flag and the come and take it flag flying out in front of my house. I don’t like being told what to do. I get it.
And the idea of being told submit, oh, it leaves a bad taste in your mouth. And yet realistically, we as Christians, we as humans all have things that God has called us to submit to. But he’s calling us to do, and here in particular to the wives, he’s calling us to do something that is difficult, that goes against the grain of who we are by nature.
But not just the women, because verse 19 calls men to love their wives. I know we’re taught, it seems almost like it should go without saying, men love your wives. But this agape love that’s spoken of in Scripture, God’s kind of love is an unconditional, self-sacrificial love.
Men, are we ever selfish? Is that just me? Your wife needs help, but you’d rather sit there with your feet up and watch the television.
Is that anybody else in here or is that just me? You know what? He tells us get up and do it anyway.
Okay, that’s part of that self-sacrificial, unconditional love. That agape kind of love is really something that only God does by nature. It’s something that He has to put in us.
So this idea of loving sacrificially. And by the way, without resentment, He says, and don’t be bitter. Do not be bitter toward them.
Now, it’s part of being a husband that we’re called on to give up certain things for the good of our wives and our families. Sometimes we make career decisions. Sometimes we make financial decisions that we don’t necessarily want to make, and we make those for the good of our families.
We don’t get to come back and resent them over that. Yeah, I could have been an astronaut if I hadn’t married you. No, that’s not how we’re supposed to be.
We have to put those things aside and love our wives sacrificially. and doing that, doing that can be challenging. It can be every bit as challenging as the idea of submitting to anyone or anything.
Verse 20, I don’t feel like I need to camp out here. Children are not necessarily naturally inclined to be obedient. Christy knows.
I’m assuming because you’re our children’s director or not, because you’re not talking about your own kids, right? She works with all of our children. I got to lunch today.
My family was already there. I got to lunch and I sat between Charlie and Jojo. I don’t know what I did.
I don’t know. I must have been bad this morning. No, I loved them.
Jojo, you know, she just makes a mess because she’s at that age. But Charlie was just in a bad mood. Charlie gives him the mac and cheese he wanted.
No. Okay, here’s the other mac and cheese you wanted. No, I want fruit.
We gave the boy fruit. He wouldn’t know what to do with it. She tries to give him his cookie that came with the meal. I don’t want it.
He was just in a mean mood and would not listen to us. And I know none of you have ever had children that did anything like that, right? As children, we are not inclined to obey.
We want to do what we want to do when we want to do it. And we want everybody else to be okay with that. The reason for that is the sin nature.
Just as we’re big sinners, they are little sinners. They’re born that way. So they’re not inclined to be obedient either.
It’s no easier for them. And yet they’re told to obey their parents in all things. Now, verse 21 says of the fathers.
And by the way, the way this word is used in Greek, it can mean parents. It can mean fathers specifically. Either one of those would be a correct translation.
Same thing as in Spanish. You can say parents as padres. That can also mean fathers.
So he says, don’t provoke your children to wrath. Don’t provoke them lest they become discouraged. Now what he’s describing here, this idea of provoking, It means to do something unreasonable, to do something unjust that’s going to cause people to harbor feelings of resentment.
Now, at some point, this is unavoidable to do things that are going to make your children mad. If I tell Charlie not to run out into the street, he gets mad. But as a responsible parent, I have to do that.
What he’s talking about here is don’t be an ogre. Don’t do things deliberately. Don’t treat your children unjustly in a way that’s going to cause them to resent you.
And we’ve got to understand too from verse 21, in that day, the fathers especially had almost unlimited power over their children. I had a nut job of a professor in college. I had a few of them, but I had one in particular who talked about the Roman times, because he didn’t like people like me who were pro-life.
And he talked about the Roman times and how a father, I’m a little unclear on the legality of this myself, but he said a father could put his child to death for any, at least at some point in the Roman empire, could put his child to death for any reason he saw fit up until the time they were considered adults. And he said, and I think that’s the system we ought to go back to today. A person becomes a person, they become a human life at adulthood.
Okay, I don’t know how much of that was his sincere belief or how much of that was, we didn’t have a word for it back then, but now we call it trolling. You know, just trying to get a rise out of people. But I do know that whether his extreme was correct or not, fathers in the Roman world had a wide degree of latitude.
They could do things we could never get away with today, and nobody could call them on it. They had nearly unlimited power. And Paul is telling Christian parents, Christian fathers in particular, just because you have that power under the law doesn’t mean you use it, because you’re under God as well.
So treat your children justly. And in verse 22, he begins talking to the servants, the bond servants. And now we couldn’t necessarily blame servants for doing the minimum to try to get by.
A lot of people who aren’t even bond servants do that in their jobs today. What’s the least I have to do to get paid and not get fired? That’s what I’ll do.
I remember my first job at the grocery store at Homeland when I was in high school. It almost seemed like that was a competition among some of the, well, I was going to say some of the teenage employees, but some of the adults too. Almost like a competition to see who could do the least without getting fired.
I worked in county government for a while too. And one of my favorite jokes ever since then has been, do you know how many people work for the county? One out of four.
What’s the leader? If any of you are currently government employees, my apologies. That’s just my experience.
It’s our human nature to say, what can we get by with? And he was telling these servants, don’t you do that. You work as though you’re serving the Lord and not serving these human masters.
And in chapter 4 verse 1, he turns back to the masters, tells them to treat their servants with justice and fairness. When masters, like fathers, had wide latitude to dictate the terms of service, this idea of bond servants, we could get into the whole discussion about why didn’t the Bible just abolish slavery. First of all, just as a very quick addressing of this topic, slavery in the Roman Empire was not exactly like slavery in the United States.
The Bible nowhere condones slavery, certainly in the New Testament, but it did recognize that it existed and told Christians that they were supposed to do better than what the world expected. So they had wide latitude. Sometimes these people were in slavery because they sold themselves into slavery.
Sometimes they just preferred working for somebody and being taken care of. They didn’t want to be the guy out there starting his own business. They to work in somebody else’s house.
Sometimes it was temporary to settle a debt. So it was very different from what, I’m not saying it was a good system, but it was very different from what we think of as slavery in our country. They still had wide authority over their servants, even their bond servants.
And Paul is saying here to Christians, just because you have that authority doesn’t mean you get to misuse it. And we could bring all of these things into our world today. We don’t necessarily have bond servant and master relationships, but we do have employee-employer relationships, and sometimes it might feel like the same thing.
We still have parent-child relationships. We still have husband-wife relationships. We still have other relationships that even though he doesn’t spell them out in black and white, the principles can still transfer.
Christians are still having to deal with one another and with other people, and the way we do that reflects our devotion to Jesus Christ. Now I say that because the world, or some more liberal churches included, would look at passages like this and say, you know, we don’t need to teach that anymore. That’s inconvenient. That’s first century thinking.
Listen, everything in the Bible doesn’t have to be convenient for me to believe it’s what God said and it applies. God doesn’t command things according to my convenience. He we feel like we as a society have evolved beyond these things doesn’t mean that God has changed.
And so we need to understand that if God says something, just because culture, and by the way, this applies to a wide variety of things being discussed in our world today. If God says one thing and culture says, no, that’s inconvenient, so we’re going to ignore it, it doesn’t mean we as Christians get to side with the culture and say, no, it’s inconvenient, we’re going to ignore it. At the same time, we need to understand what it’s talking about here, because when we look at what he’s talking about here.
A lot of people in our day will say, well, this is a very patriarchal system. It’s suppressing slaves. It’s suppressing women.
It’s suppressing the children. Listen, when you look at the Roman world into which Paul was speaking under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, women didn’t really have rights. Children didn’t really have rights.
Slaves really didn’t have rights. Jesus Christ was the first one to recognize in a public way the inherent worth of every person who’s created in the image of God. Now in God’s order, we all have different roles to play.
We all have different jobs. Just like in a church, we all have different ministries that we carry out, but we are equal in value before God. And so we look at things like submission, and the world would say, you can’t teach that, or you shouldn’t teach that anymore.
My mother-in-law said something I think was very wise. Don’t tell her I said that. She may be watching right now.
She said something very wise this weekend when we were talking about this passage of Scripture. At the breakfast table one of the days she was here. She was talking about a generation or two ago, I don’t remember if it was her family or a family she knew, but she was talking about going to family events, and the men would be fed first. The women would fix the plates for the men, bring it in, they would serve them hand and foot, and then the women, if there was anything left over, would go and eat in the kitchen.
And I’m just thinking, if I suggested that, what delightful surprises I might find on my plate. And my mother-in-law said this, submission is biblical, bondage is not. So if you hear Paul saying, wives submit to your husbands, and you think of a wife being a slave to her husband, please understand that is not what he’s talking about.
For every person involved here, which covers all of us, we look at this and we think some people are being told you have to stay down here, But for every person involved here, our devotion to Christ places certain restrictions on our natural inclinations for everybody. For the husband, for the wife, for the parent, for the child, for the employer, for the employee, it places certain restraints on what we can and can’t do, what we should and shouldn’t do. Even when the world says we can get by with treating others badly.
There are some of these the world will look at and say, well, that’s not a problem. Let the employees slack off. They’re just getting what they deserve from the fat cat business owners.
Listen, just because the world says you can treat somebody badly doesn’t mean that God is okay with it. And with the employer, just because they have the power of the purse strings over the worker, even if the world says it’s okay, doesn’t mean they get to treat people badly. Doesn’t mean God says it’s okay.
Husbands and wives treat each other badly. And just because at one time or another, just because a hundred years ago, society said it was okay for the husband to treat the wife badly, and just because nowadays society applauds the wife treating the husband badly, in neither case does that make it okay with the Lord. He says there are restraints on our natural inclinations to say, I’m going to do what I want, I’m going to advance my cause, I’m going to fight for my rights, because it’s terrible for the relationship, it’s terrible for the cause of the gospel as well, because the gospel calls us to treat others with respect.
Now, when I say that, I’m not trying to be one of these preachers that makes everything the gospel. The gospel is the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the free offer of salvation we have as a result. But that message has implications to it.
And one of those things is that if Jesus Christ died to pay for the sins of all of us, then we all have value to the Holy God who created us, in spite of the fact that we are fallen sinners. And if God values us, if God created us in His image, and if Jesus died for us, then we ought to treat each other better than the world often says we should or could or can. In each of these cases, in each of these cases for the husbands, for the wives, for the parents, for the children, for the employers, for the employees, for all of them, in each of these cases, Paul tells them that they should do something that runs directly opposite of what the world says they could do.
And Jesus, by the way, exemplified this. Think of what Jesus would have been justified in doing with the way He was treated often during His earthly ministry. There were discussions about calling down fire from heaven.
Do any of us in here doubt that He could have done that at any moment? And yet when James and John suggested it, He said no. When He was being arrested and taken away to the cross, He told Peter He could have called down legions of angels. They could have set Him free.
If He wanted to be free, He could have been freed at any moment. And we certainly didn’t deserve Him going any further with that whole ordeal than He was at that but he went through it anyway. And while he hung up there, he said, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.
Jesus set the example of how we’re supposed to treat others. These restraints that are put on us are not designed to oppress us. We hear that word restraint.
And again, I don’t like the idea of being told what I can and can’t do. But they’re not designed to oppress us. They’re designed to encourage a spirit of grace that allows us to live in peace so that we can live at peace with one another.
See, our initial instinct is to look what we give up. We look at each of these and we sort ourselves into the categories. Which category do I fall into?
And God says, I can’t do what? We look at what we give up. Sometimes we fail to, in looking at the demands on us, we fail to appreciate the restraints that are put on the other side for our protection.
There’s a mutual respect here that’s intended for our own good. God designed it for the husband and wife to respect one another. For the wife to submit, but for the husband to sacrifice himself for her sake.
And I remember hearing years ago a story of a militant feminist who was outraged at the suggestion of submitting, happened to be in a church service, I wish I could remember the name, happened to be in a church service and was getting up to leave and then heard what came next in, I believe it’s Ephesians, where he says, wives submit to your husbands. And then in the next breath, he says, and husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it. And she was struck by that and said later on, if I found a man who was willing to sacrifice himself for me like that and willing to love me like that, I would have no problem submitting to him.
See, we get this all twisted when we just look at me, me, me, what I’ve lost, what I’m told I can’t do, and we fail to look at the whole system that God has set up for our protection and the mutual respect that’s supposed to go here. Now, I don’t hold us up as a perfect example by any stretch of the imagination, But I feel like my wife is pretty good at being a submitter. Is that a word?
Now, those of you who know her, know she’s going to tell you what she thinks. She’s nobody’s doormat. But I know if I ever put my foot down, she’ll say, oh, okay.
Some of y’all know we were excited about the Euro truck that came to town the other day. She was calling in the order. She said, what do I do?
Because I want a Euro, but I also want to try this chicken thing, and I don’t know what to order. I said, tell you what, Order you and me each a euro, order that chicken thing, and we’ll split it. And she said, yes, sir.
We had been talking about this passage here. Now, see, I’m pretty laid back. I don’t boss her around.
But if I ever seriously come to her and say this is what we need to do, she’s willing to respect that. But at the same time, I’ve had to get there by showing her I’m willing to sacrifice what I want and what my preference would be for her good. If she needs something, that’s what we’re going to do.
Guys, it’s a two-way street. God designed this to be a two-way street of respect in all of these relationships. And by the way, even if it doesn’t turn out to be mutual, God can still bring something good out of it.
He talks about in some places the wives still submitting to their husbands, even if they’re not believers, and in some cases winning them to Christ as a result. There have been times that I’ve had employers who did not treat me with respect, But by treating them with respect in return, I’ve had opportunities to share the gospel with them. God can bring something good out of a bad situation.
And I want to clarify something else too. Because some people will say, I have seen where some people have said that this idea of submission taught in the Bible is just a way to cover up for abuse. In none of this does it mean you have to sit there and take something like that.
Had a woman come to me for counseling, sat down with me and my wife for counseling a while back. She said, I’ve got to talk to somebody. She’s brand new at the church.
She said, I’ve got to talk to somebody. She said, I was raised in church. I don’t like divorce.
I understand what the Bible teaches. I said, but he’s been abusive. I said, the Bible may not give that as grounds for.
. . It may not spell that out as grounds for divorce, but it doesn’t mean you’ve got to sit there and take it.
I said, you get out of there. If we need to go with you or call the cops to go with you or whatever, you need to get stuff. We’ll find you a place to stay.
And you tell him you’re not coming back until he gets himself some real help his head on strike. You don’t have to sit there and take that. I just want to be clear that this idea of this respect, it doesn’t mean that we get knocked around and just have to sit there and take it.
But if we will do what he’s talking about, if we will treat each other with respect in all of these relationships, the result of it, of treating each other the way God desires us to, some of the things he lists here, look at verse 19. I turned too far back. Look at verse 19, if I can get to the right page.
He says, husbands love your wives and do not be bitter toward them. Verse 21, fathers don’t provoke your children lest they become discouraged. Chapter 4 verse 1, give your servants what is just and fair.
The result of treating each other as God desires means there’s going to be less bitterness in our relationships. It means there’s going to be less discouragement in our relationships. It means there’s going to be less injustice in our relationships.
Does it mean there’ll be zero? No, we live in a fallen world. But we’re better off doing things God’s way.
So then we have to answer the question, we’re getting close to the closing here. We have to answer the question, how do we do this when it’s so hard? Because again, it cuts counter to how we’re wired sometimes.
How can we do this when it’s so hard? This whole thing, doing all the things that he spelled out here, it requires a change of focus from what we deserve or from what they deserve to what Christ deserves. Too many relationships are poisoned by people saying, but what they really deserve is, and we really should be thinking about what Christ deserves.
Because He’s at the center of all this. If you’re a Christian, He’s at the center of this for you. In verse 18, when He tells the wives to submit to the husbands, He says, as is fitting in the Lord.
In verse 20, when He talks about the children obeying, He says, for this is well-pleasing to the Lord. In verse 22, He talks to the servants and talks about doing these things in sincerity of heart, Fearing God. It requires each of us to look at our relationships, to all the relationships we have.
Not as ways to get what we want or what we deserve, or give people back what we think they deserve, but to look at each relationship as a way to glorify Christ and to remember that if anyone doesn’t do what they should, if anybody doesn’t hold up their end of the bargain, he’s going to be the one to take care of it. And he can do a better job at that than we ever could. Because he says here at the end of this, in verse 25, but he who does wrong will be repaid for